This invention relates to the collection and transmission of data in medical monitoring equipment and, in particular, to the collection, selection, arrangement, formatting, and transmission of data in photoplethysmographic systems which relate to the concentrations of certain blood analyte levels of a patient.
It is a problem in the field of monitoring systems to transmit photoplethysmographic monitoring data to a physician, hospital, or other care giver from a remote location using only the hardware associated with the standard photoplethysmographic devices. To date no photoplethysmographic monitors exist which are capable of pre-formatting the data collected and blood analyte measurements generated by a photoplethysmographic monitor.
A facsimile is a digital representation of an image. Data and text in a facsimile is not stored as words and letters in ASCII format, but rather the image of the text, data, graphs, etc. is stored as a gray-scale bit map. It is possible to purchase a standard modem for the transmittal of data to a remote location. However, there is no way to send the information directly to a facsimile machine due to the special facsimile data format which is required.
The problems associated with the limitations of standard photoplethysmographic systems has led to a number of prior art alternatives which have their own limitations and drawbacks.
The Medical Data Archiving Corporation (MDAC) Oximetry Recording and Reporting System (OxiScan(trademark)) provides a method and system for transmission of oximetry data via standard telephone lines. The OxiScan(trademark) system requires the connection of the photoplethysmographic monitor to a processing terminal. Additionally, the output of the processing terminal is not sent to the ultimate care provider, but rather, is directed to the MDAC Reporting Service which then sends an oximetry report to a facsimile machine within fifteen minutes. The delay caused by the intermediate processing at a second remote location and the possibility of error introduced by the additional transmission step reduces the usefulness of such a system.
In most commercial pulse oximeters such as the Ohmeda(copyright) 3800 or the Nellcor xe2x88x923000 there is an RS232 serial port which may be used to download collected photoplethysmographic data from a pulse oximeter to another computing device. However, there is presently no photoplethysmographic system that enables a user, such as a remote acute care provider, to convey photoplethysmographic data directly from the remote field location to the ultimate care provider in the hospital or physician""s office.
The above described problems are solved and a technical advance achieved in the field by the photoplethysmographic system of the present invention which conveys photoplethysmographic data to the standard facsimile machine of a remote user in a simple, direct, and immediate manner. This photoplethysmographic system produces a facsimile data format serial output which can be transmitted to the remote facsimile via telephone lines via an external modem or via a modem internal to the photoplethysmographic monitor. Photoplethysmographic data may also be transmitted to a remote host system via the internal or external modem. The remote host system may also retrieve the data through contacting the system of the present invention directly. Lastly, through an internal printer, photoplethysmographic data may be printed out in hard copy form.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention, a photoplethysmographic monitoring system provides the facsimile data format for oximetry data to an external modem via its serial port. In another embodiment of the invention, the photoplethysmographic monitor contains the modem internally and, therefore, can transmit formatted reports directly to the facsimile machine of a remote user without additional hardware.